Simon Field | Mature color, a brick fade and mahogany core; nose of school libraries at the end of the holidays, peat and forest floor. Not much sign of fruit on the attack. The palate is peppery, soft spice to the fore and still little by way of fruit tannin, and a reserve unusual for this vintage evidenced. The direction is hard to fathom—not quite the road to perdition, but certainly bumpy and maybe a little uncomfortable. Sinewy and cerebral; hard to read for sure, therefore worthy of recalibration the next time. For now, things look promising. Indeed, this opinion is vouchsafed several times over the next few minutes and hours—and the score keeps creeping up. | 93

Andrew Jefford | This wine comes after a run of three very deeply colored 1985s, and thus it seems as if it is made from a different vintage altogether: a clear, translucent oxblood red working out to a russet-garnet rim. Aromatically, too, it is on a completely different trajectory: sweet chocolate and toffee are nice enough, I guess there is a little tar for complexity, some menthol, some dry grass—the notes of age of a completely mature Port. It’s got there, unpacked, had a good time, and is ready to go home again: Catch it while you can. The palate confirms this aromatic analysis. Nothing at all wrong with it, and totally delicious drinking, but it really isn’t in the same ballpark as [Dow’s, Graham’s, and Fonseca’s 1985s] and, well, that’s that. At the right price, it might be a nice buy. | 86

Richard Mayson | Quite pale in color, especially following on from some of the opaque ’85s, broad pink-tawny rim; gentle, open, well-developed floral fruit on the nose, lifted withatouch of minty ripeness; soft, suave, graceful, and seductive, lovely, fresh blueberry fruit on the palate, backed by firm, gritty tannins, leaving a lithe, linear finish. Fully mature and with the poise to go on. | 91